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Dessert

Strawberry Water-Ice

A chilled strawberry dessert made by freezing a mixture of strawberries, sugar, citrus, and optional cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Strawberry Water-Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberry base

  1. Pick and wash the strawberries.

  2. Place the strawberries in a bowl with powdered sugar and lemon juice.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve into another bowl.

  4. Mix in the simple syrup and cochineal.

Freeze the ice

  1. Pour the mixture into a freezer.

  2. Churn until ready.

Make the second mixture

  1. Puree enough strawberries to fill two cups.

  2. Combine the puree with caster sugar, lemon juice, orange juice, and grated peels.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Place the mixture in a freezer.

  5. Churn occasionally until frozen.

Serve

  1. Layer large ripe strawberries in a mold.

  2. Sprinkle the strawberries with caster sugar.

  3. Pack the strawberries in crushed ice.

  4. Serve the frozen mixture on a cold dish with the strawberries.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Provide the main flavor and color, and the fruit body of the frozen ice.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the mixture and lowers its freezing point, keeping the ice softer.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavor and balances the sweetness.
Simple syrup
Adds sweetness and dissolved sugar that helps keep the ice smooth rather than icy.

The step that matters

Churning the frozen mixture. Churning while it freezes breaks up ice crystals and incorporates air, giving a smooth texture; letting it freeze still produces a coarse, icy result.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, syrup):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, syrup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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